Renewable services

We are passionate about the prospect of renewables in the aviation fuel market.

What we especially like is that one of the major pathways by which renewable jet fuel components can be manufactured involves the Fischer-Tropsch process. This is a relatively mature (and therefore de-risked) technique, tracing its roots back to the 1930s. It has been used to convert coal into fuels for many years, and is currently part of the process to convert natural gas into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

To date it has been a challenge to make the process efficient because it is exothermic and produces considerable quantities of heat energy which is difficult to transport or use profitably.

However there are many existing industries which need heat for their processes. Typically this is provided by localised relatively small-scale on-site heat generation (steam boilers) using natural gas, oil and coal – each with a carbon footprint.

In our dream world we would like to see renewable jet fuel components being made in small manufacturing units local to raw material sources (forests and other sources of non-food biomass) and at distributed sites each feeding into the established jet fuel supply chains upstream of airports. This could enable multiple airports to take the renewable fuel.

These small fuel manufacturing units would still be on a relatively large scale – upwards of 150,000 tonnes per year seems to be the lower limit.

Around them would be clustered users of the heat output from the process. This could be power generation, or industries which currently rely on buying heat for their production process – such as the paper industry and others – which need to heat or dry the end product.

We want to turn this dream into reality.

Working with eJet:

Design and engineering from scoping to fully functioning manufacturing plant

Supply chain optimisation in order that renewable fuel components can find their way into the supply of fuel to airports